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History of the CFHF Fantasy League
The CFHF Fantasy League is a Hockey's Future message board and Yahoo! Fantasy-based fantasy hockey keeper league, founded in 2012 on the Calgary Flames board on HFBoards.com. The history of the league is detailed on this page. A tabular look at each team's various names and ownership through the years can be found on the History of Teams and GMs page. Foundation and 2012-13 Season In both the 2010 and 2011 off-seasons, Yahoo! Fantasy hockey leagues were attempted on the Flames board, with threads started by tfong and GLaDOS, respectively. The 2010 edition was spearheaded by Keys, and was designed to be run mainly through Yahoo! as a single-season competition, with the board used only for finding willing competitors. Due to various issues with members dropping out last-minute before live drafts, the league was taken off the Flames board and was continued on the Fantasy Hockey board, open to Northwest Division fans. The league lasted a year. The 2011 edition seems to have been a success in getting off the ground, but according to GLaDOS, it "fizzed pretty quick." According to Autograph (formerly Keys), only 3 or 4 of the 16 teams were active. On July 7, 2012, user Flamesrule created a thread looking for interest in a keeper league on the Flames board. There was instant interest from several members who had participated in the aforementioned leagues from off-seasons past. The keeper aspect of the league generated even more interest than before, and it was agreed that a message-board provided a very convenient means of ensuring activity and participation in the league long-term. Prospects were also a part of Flamesrule's vision outlined in the OP, something which members found intriguing. Some members, such as MarkGio, were concerned about the league taking too much work and time. tfong, on the other hand, was only interested if penalty minutes were not included as a statistic. Overall, though, the sentiment was widespread enthusiasm, and it did not take long for the league to become fully subscribed. On July 11, Flamesrule ironed out some of the details that had been discussed, such as having 9 keepers per team per season, with the champion being rewarded with an additional keeper. The initial list of GMs to form the league was Flamesrule, tfong, drewskiv, TheGleninator, GLaDOS, Devilspuppet666, Feel The Heat, Autograph, shidoshi, nogger, Jarome Iginla, Spacecorn, FlaMeRss, Ynnek, KiwiFlamesFan, ALI, Skobel24 and jtommyt. Soon after registration was closed, InfinityIggy, Savoie16 and MarkGio expressed interest in joining if there were GMs who dropped out. When jtommyt, shidoshi and FlaMeRss proved to be unresponsive to PMs from the commissioner, they were replaced by these three GMs, providing the 18 teams who took place in the 2012 CFHF Main Draft, which began on July 17, 2012, in the order they were assigned picks: *Skobel24 *Spacecorn *Devilspuppet666 *Jarome Iginla *Autograph *ALI *GLaDOS *InfinityIggy *Flamesrule *drewskiv *MarkGio *Ynnek *nogger *tfong *KiwiFlamesFan *Savoie16 *Feel The Heat *TheGleninator Over the next few days, more minor details were worked out. It was decided that a second draft for prospects would take place after the first draft, for the main rosters. On July 18, a few GMs began naming their teams. Savoie16 named his club "Black Knights" while GLaDOS names his team "Hamilton Slackberrys" (later amended to Hamilton Slackberry, as we know it today). MarkGio named his club "Lethargic Sloths." drewskiv named his team "Jammin' Jellies," Skobel24 named his team "Seattle Falcons" after briefly considering "Made in Kariya," and Devilspuppet666 chose the name "Pink Panthers." TheGleninator announced that his team was the "Fluffy Pink Ponies." After previously having named his team "The Legion" on Yahoo, tfong changed the name to "Flaming Wings." Also on Yahoo, nogger named his team "Jamaican Jumpin' Quadriplegics," but switched to "Don't Toews Me Bro" before the season began. InfinityIggy named his team "The Terrors." ALI decided to name his team "ALI" without too much thought. Feel The Heat went with the name "Rocky Mtn Heat," while Flamesrule chose "Flaming Horseheads." Autograph named his team "Gangnam Style" and Jarome Iginla named his team "Urine Trouble" after considering "Wheeling Nailers." KiwiFlamesFan picked "Generic Team Name." Ynnek named his team "Feaster's Flying Flamekowski's." InfinityIggy was named the co-commissioner of the league for the first season, helping out Flamesrule with the day-to-day running of the drafts and, eventually, the league. The scoring categories for the first season were decided upon: for skaters, there were nine categories (G, A, P, +/-, PPP, FOW, H, BLK), and for goalies, there were five categories (W, L, GAA, SV%, SO). There was some discussion over whether to keep score using conventional category wins and losses, or whether to use a weighted point system for each statistic. A poll was used to determine that the league generally favoured the former. The league was separated into three divisions of six teams. It became clear during the draft that there needed to be some public, editable documents ciculated in order for teams to be able to conveniently check other teams' prospects and rosters during the draft, as well as checking who had already been taken. To this end, Feel The Heat provided a public, online spreadsheet showing the complete draft board, and commissioner Flamesrule made up documents listing prospects. This system proved to be sufficient for the first season. On August 1, Spacecorn missed his draft slot without excuse for a second time, and was to be assigned a co-owner to manage through the rest of the draft. The initial draft contained much discussion over inactivity, as several GMs were concerned with losing the momentum that had been built up at the foundation of the draft, with all those involved being acutely aware that inactivity and apathy, even if contained within just a few GMs, are typically what kills fantasy leagues. Devilspuppet666 also was prone to missing his draft slot, and Skobel24 developed that habit in the later rounds of the main draft. The draft concluded on August 28, 2012. Spacecorn was replaced as GM of his team by Mikael Backlund. Mikael Backlund promptly failed to respond to any PMs, and was replaced within days by Hoshiblitz in time for the 2012 CFHF Prospect Draft. The first trade in the history of the CFHF Fantasy League was made on September 2, 2012, as Autograph looked to rid himself of prospect picks in exchange for future main draft upgrades. The Prospect Draft dragged even more than the Main Draft had, and in the process, one pick got completely skipped in the third round. As the draft wound to a halt, it then became clear that the NHL would be locked out, delaying the start of the season. The chatter surrounding the Fantasy League went completely dead at this point. When the end of the lockout was announced on January 6, 2013, the thread once again came alive. According to Flamesrule, the commissioner of the league, he had misgivings over the way the league had gone through its inaugural summer, and he was unsure of whether he wanted it to come back to life after its four month hibernation. However, interest from most GMs was clearly there, and the season was started in January. Hoshiblitz, however, was unable to participate as GM, and ownership of the Space Penguins was given back to Spacecorn, who had promised to participate more. Through the first season, as was the case through the first draft, there were various levels of participation and interest from GMs around the league. On February 9, 2013, Skobel24's Seattle Falcons team was given to Thumper17, who renamed it "Jamison Investors." The first CFHF Cup Final was played between Black Knights and Hamilton Slackberry, with the Knights emerging as inaugural championships by way of a tiebreaker. At the end of the season, lack of participation spelled the end of the line for four GMs: Devilspuppet666, ALI, Spacecorn and Thumper17. ALI was taken over by Fleury14, who renamed the team Fleury14, on June 12, 2013. Space Penguins was taken over by InFeasterWeTrust on the same day. The league went into its first off-season with some degree of concern over apathy and whether the league would survive. 2013-14 Season At the start of the 2013 CFHF Draft, two further GM changes were made as Devilspuppet666 and Thumper17 did not return to the league to participate. Pink Panthers was taken over by wflames on June 26, 2013, who changed the team name to "It's Not Lupul." On July 9, MVW replaced Thumper17 as GM of Jamison Investors, and renamed the club "Crosby's Chiclets." Over the course of the second season of the league, at various times, wflames became Anglesmith, Flamesrule became TherapyforGlencross, Jarome Iginla became Sean Monahan, GLaDOS became King Of The North, Autograph became Signature and InFeasterWeTrust became RaginStajan. drewskiv renamed the Jammin' Jellies "SmokeScreen," while RaginStajan renamed the Space Penguins "the Squirtle Squad." Ynnek renamed Feaster's Flying Flamekowski's "Burke's Truculent Trainwreck" and Signature renamed Gangname Style "Hejda's Gonna Hate." The three divisions comprising the league were named during the off-season as the McDonald Division, the Loob Division and the Vernon Division, and teams were re-aligned based on their standing in the inaugural season. After joining the league, wflames immediately began looking at ways to streamline the sharing of information during the draft, such as rosters, prospects, and owned draft picks. He also expressed a desire to be able to have an online record of standings, trades and traded draft picks. Initially, wflames created google docs for keeping track of rosters, drafts and prospects and shared them with the league; however, he sought a more permanent solution. The first solution attempted was to start a website using the sit "Wix." This proved to be an extremely inefficient method, as tables were poorly integrated and updates would be a pain. Abandoning this, he instead created this wiki, and asked other GMs to maintain their own pages while he took care of most of the record-keeping. The idea was generally well-received, as people were happy to be able to quickly check who other people owned during the off-season when Yahoo was off-line. Early in the season, Anglesmith was named as co-commissioner, replacing InfinityIggy. The 2013 off-season was extremely active with trades, but the main draft went so late into the summer that the Prospect Draft had to be conducted via auto-pick from submitted lists. Part of this problem was the lack of an ironclad system for dealing with GMs not showing up for their pick, a theme that had come up often the previous off-season. One concern that many GMs had was that too many prospects were being selected in the Main Draft, which was still being held prior to the Prospect draft. This was found to be diluting the Prospect Draft to a great extend, as the holders of the first overall prospect picks were not being rewarded with the best prospects available. As a result, at the beginning of the season, a poll was conducted with regards to how to address the problem, and the league announced that in future, the Prospect Draft would take place prior to the Main Draft. There was some discussion of other possible rule/scoring changes going into the new season, but ultimately all other rules in the league were kept constant to start the year. Early into the 2013 season, several GMs became very active in terms of defining their teams as either strong buyers or strong sellers. The Lethargic Sloths and Don't Toews Me Bro, as well as SmokeScreen, began selling off assets at lightning-pace quite early into the year, while the Flaming Horseheads, the Squirtle Squad and Crosby's Chiclets were heavy buyers. One issue that came to a head around mid-season was "delayed trades," where a condition on a trade was that a player be exchanged at some point in the future. This was widely considered to violate the spirit of the game and mess up the competitive balance, as in most cases it is an attempt to circumvent keeper restrictions. The first issue arose with a trade between Flaming Wings and Lethargic Sloths, whereby part of the deal was an agreement that Marian Hossa be traded to the Sloths at the end of the playoffs. There were minor misgivings expressed about this trade; however, the straw that broke the camel's back was a trade on January 10, 2014 between Rocky Mtn Heat and Flaming Horseheads, where Mike Smith was traded to the Horseheads at an extremely reduced price, with the agreement that he be traded back at the end of the playoffs. Several GMs got up in arms and expressed displeasure at this trade, and the result of this was a veto of the latter trade, and a blanket rule going forward that future exchanges of roster players could not be part of any trades, which was announced on January 11, 2014. The former trade was grandfathered in, as it had been allowed to stand for a few weeks, and as the Hossa exchange was thought to be a relatively minor part of the trade. Towards the end of the season, with his team in last place after the fire sale of earlier in the season, MarkGio began to be disenchanted with the league, especially with the requirement of setting lineups every day when his aim was to obtain a high draft pick. Before the season came to a close, MarkGio left the league, turning his Lethargic Sloths over to DBU. Flaming Horseheads had managed to put together an extremely deep roster through a series of buying trades earlier in the season, and steam-rolled the competition on route to capturing the second ever CFHF Cup. Unlike Black Knights before him, GM TheraphyforGlencross decided to receive an extra 10th-round pick instead of an extra keeper as his prize. During the playoffs, a new award was announced to decide the GM of the Year through peer-voting. The award was named the H. Jay Feaster Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of General Management, and the first edition of the award was presented to MVW, who, through a vast series of trades throughout the season, managed to drastically improve his team's fortunes and become a playoff team. 2014-15 Season Prior to the 2014 CFHF Prospect Draft, a few more GM changes were effected. Ynnek was replaced by Unlimited Chequing, and Fleury14 was replaced by MonahanTheMan. At various points during the season, King Of The North became King In The North, TherapyforGlencross became YMCMBYOLO, and MVW became Johnny Hoxville. DBU changed the Lethargic Sloths to "Ovechkin Persei 8," while Feel The Heat changed his team's name from Rocky Mtn Heat to "Quick Six." Unlimited Chequing changed his team's name from Burke's Truculent Trainwreck to "Off the Post AINEC." Sean Monahan changed from Urine Trouble to "Girouxsalem." Anglesmith changed his team name to "Intangibles," while Signature renamed his team "Pressbox Millionaires." Further rule changes for the upcoming 2014-15 season were discussed, but no rule changes were decided upon going into the season. In particular, there was interest from many in replacing certain scoring categories, reducing the significance of goalies, or even switching from Yahoo! to ESPN Fantasy. In the end, however, no rule changes were made for the start of the season. One new rule was brought in for the start of the season, however. Co-commissioner Anglesmith raised issue with the ever-increasing prospect list and the growing difficulty to maintain it, and various different approaches were suggested for fixing it. In the end, a solution was settled upon whereby GMs could cut two prospects in exchange for one fourth-round prospect draft pick in the next soonest prospect draft. This solution was designed to prevent bust prospects from sitting on the list forever without ever playing in the NHL. In addition, a new rule was established that teams could only change names during the time between the end of the playoffs and the start of the Prospect Draft. With the Flames doing quite well in the early-going of the 2014-15 season, the Flames board started to become much more active. Many posters expressed interest in joining the league, and as a result, on November 20, 2014, commissioner TherapyforGlencross announced officially that the league was entering into an expansion process in the 2015 off-season, to expand from 18 teams to 20. Over the next few months, the commissioners fielded PMs of interest in joining the league, and at the same time worked on ironing out the details of how expansion would work. Once again, the issues of scoring categories and changing from Yahoo! to ESPN were discussed. The latter move was squashed once again once it was discovered that ESPN had a maximum of 18 teams per league. Scoring category changes were, however, decided upon for next season. Despite heavy opposition from tfong, a noted and staunch opponent to the concept of scoring PIMs in fantasy leagues, PIMs were to be introduced to the league as a category, along with SOG. Categories to be removed from the league were +/- and SOs, effectively reducing the degree to which goaltending decided matchups. This change was thought to be important, as expansion to 20 teams meant a scarcity of quality goaltenders around the league especially with certain teams holding two solidified starting goaltenders, and having no intention of letting either go. An additional step in the direction of balancing the goaltending league-wide was the announcement that as part of the expansion process, teams would only be allowed to keep one goaltender with 50 games played the previous season. Towards the end of the season, the two new expansion GMs were announced as 100 Third Graders and Taranis. Intangibles ended up coming first overall in the regular seasaon, setting a league record for points in a season. Black Knights eventually went on to win their second CFHF Cup in the three years of the league's existence. GM Savoie16 was also awarded the 2014-15 H. Jay Feaster Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of General Management. Expansion and 2015-16 Season The details of expansion had been worked out during the previous season. It was decided that the 18 existing GMs would pick only eight keepers at the end of the season, and that the two expansion GMs would then select, cumulatively, one player from each team's roster in an Expansion Draft in order to make their respective nine-player rosters. Upon the conclusion of this Expansion Draft, the existing teams were permitted to "keep" one additional player to round out their nine keepers. In addition, expansion teams were to be given a separate Expansion Prospect Draft where they were allowed to take any previously drafted (or previously undrafted) players with 0 NHL games. These players were to be given 50 games of prospect eligibility, rather than the standard 100. Early during the off-season, drewskiv became ImNotPoorImPoirier and RaginStajan became Ferkland. MonahanTheMan had become inactive toward the end of the 2014-15 season, and was replaced by Monabae, who renamed the team from Fleury14 to "Pingu HC." 100 Third Graders named his team "the Scorch," while Taranis named his team "Halifax Lions." A fourth division was added, named the MacInnins Division, and the 20 teams were completely realigned into four divisions of five teams, with an eye to maintaining a competitive balance across each division. Early during the season, the changes to the goaltending setup during the off-season- the minimum appearances had been reduced from three to two- came under fire. The change had been made initially to help teams who might struggle to find a solid starting goaltender, but had the unfortunate side-effect of allowing teams to win the goaltending categories based on one lucky night. Signature's suggestion to reduce the number of active goalie slots from two to one was very well-received, and in a landslide vote was decided upon by the league. The minimum goalie appearance was held at two to prevent teams who had the goalies of one team from getting the short end of the stick if that team only played once. In addition, the draft lottery process was scrutinized by some members of the league, as the chance for a truly terrible team to draft outside of the top 5 was deemed too high. In addition, the unweighted lottery to determine the positions of playoff teams in the draft was criticized as pointless and unfair. For the non-playoff teams, the weighting was reconfigured to significantly aid the bottom teams. Where previously the worst team in the league had about a 30% chance to draft outside the top 10, that chance was reduced to below 5%. The first ever three-way trade was consumated by The Terrors, Crosby's Chiclets and Army of the 12 Monkeys on November 24, 2015, involving Sidney Crosby, still regarded as the best player in the world. In late January, the league was informed of the intent of KiwiFlamesFan, founding GM of Generic Team Name, to leave the league at the conclusion of the 2015-16 season. Just before the final week, another founding GM, Signature, announced his resignation from Pressbox Millionaires. KiwiFlamesFan's replacement GM was a returnee in Fleury14, named prior to the league's trade deadline. Signature's replacement, GAMO1992, was announced during the final week of the season. For the second consecutive year, Intangibles won first place in the regular season, setting a new league record in points for a single season, as well as an all-time record 13 consecutive matchup wins to finish the season. Flaming Wings and Intangibles met in the finals of the playoffs, with Flaming Wings winning the CFHF Cup. The H. Jay Feaster Award was given to InfinityIggy for his management of The Terrors. 2016-17 Season During the previous season's playoffs, GAMO1992 announced that the name of his team would be changed from Pressbox Millionaires to Red Light District, and Johnny Hoxville announced that Crosby's Chiclets would change their name to Goodfellas. ImNotPoorImPoirier changed his team from SmokeScreen to Black Tigers later in the off-season, while TheHudlinator renamed FluffyPinkPonies to Mighty Pigs and Fleury14 renamed the team he took over from Generic Team Name to Hypnotoad's Disciples. During the season, 100 Third Graders changed his name to Method Man, DBU changed his name to Tapu Debe and nogger changed his name to Kanye. Shortly into the season, the league's commissioner and initial founder, YMCMBYOLO (formerly TherapyforGlencross and Flamesrule) announced that due to his inability to pay attention to the league due to various strains on his time, he would be leaving the league at least until late January. On November 28, 2016, TooGoodreau was announced as the Flaming Horseheads' new GM on an interim basis. GMs began to discuss proposals for changes to the league shortly thereafter. Overwhelmingly, the GMs of the league decided to revert back to the previous system of two goalie slots, instead of the one that existed for the 2016-17 season. A push to change both IR slots to IR+ slots (which allow day-to-day, Out and IR listed players to be replaced) was also successful in a landslide vote. The number of pick-ups allowed per week was reduced to 4 from 7, in order to prevent constant cycling of players and encourage GMs to maintain a 21-man roster barring injury, and only make long-term moves. Not categories were changed for the following season. The Terrors, the Techno Onion and Girouxsalem all had strong seasons from start to finish, and The Techno Onion took home the Golden Ramp Trophy. Of the three, however, only Girouxsalem made it through the first round of the playoffs, and then breezed through the second round into the final. Flaming Horseheads, however, took off under the new management of TooGoodreau, and shot up the standings in the second half of the season. They kept this momentum through the playoffs, and defeated Girouxsalem in the final, to capture the franchise's second CFHF Cup. Voting was a perfect tie for the H. Jay Feaster Award between InfinityIggy (The Terrors) and Ferkland (The Techno Onion), and they split the award, a league first. 2017-18 Season During the off-season, Method Man announced that he would change his team name from The Scorch to Wu-Tang Killa Beez. GAMO1992 renamed his team from Red Light District to Raging Monsoons. Fantasy Billionaire (the user formerly known as Feel the Heat) changed the name of Army of the 12 Monkeys to Black Aces. Hypnotoad's Disciples GM Fleury14 changed his team name to Hypnotoad's All Blacks. I Pity The Foo (the new name for ImNotPoorImPoirier) changed his team name from Black Tigers to Gunslingers. Savoie16 renamed the Black Knights to Grim Reapers. The 2017 off-season was the first in league history to not feature a change of GMs for any team. Meanwhile, Johnny Hoxville changed his name to Harvey Specter, and changed it back later in the year. The rule changes made from the previous year were considered a success. During the season, the general managers of the league decided to make two further changes. The goaltender Losses category would be removed in favour of Saves for the 2018-19 season, and the division winners, while still awarded a playoff spot automatically, would not receive the top four seeds in the playoffs. Wheeling Duster took home the Golden Ramp Trophy, but neither they nor any body could stop Flaming Horseheads from romping their way to a second consecutive championship from the 7th seed. The Horseheads became the first team to win their third championship, and the first repeat champion. 2018-19 Season Upon the conclusion of the 2018 playoffs, Sean Monahan announced his resignation as GM of Girouxsalem. DatsyukToZetterberg came on board as GM of the team, changing its name to North Kariya. The Techno Onion shortened their name officially to Techno Onion. Overall, this was the least team rebranding conducted during any off-season. Wu-Tang Killa Beez was transferred twice early in the season, firstly to Janko Unchained, and after a period of inactivity, to Gaudfather. Ferkland changed his name to ChroniclesOfRittich. Deebious changed his name to Drop Shock. Monabae changed his name to Yung Rotini. In early 2019, two GMs decided to step down from their positions. Taranis departed, and Flames Fanatic was brought in to take over the Halifax Lions. Fantasy Billionaire, one of the GMs remaining from the inaugural season of the league, stepped down as GM of Black Aces. Method Man, who had changed his username to Lunatik, offered to rejoin the league, but returned to his former team, Wu-Tang Killa Beez. Gaudfather, who had been in charge of the Beez for only a short time, gave up his post and took over the Black Aces instead. Shortley thereafter, however, Lunatik left again, and was replaced by Franson. The league decided almost unanimously to change player adds/drops to be effective on the same day, replacing next-day player movement that had existed in the league since its inception. The regular season champions were GoodFellas, who fell short by one assist of defeating Wheeling Dusters in the final. However, a stat correction after the dust had settled switched the victor to GoodFellas by virtue of a tiebreaker. This correction was noted on the day of the Keeper deadline, and the awkwardness of the situation prompted the league to ensure that the same scenario could not happen again. For future seasons, a winner would not be declared until after any stat corrections would be made. 2019-20 Season During the off-season, Raging Monsoons were re-branded to Suicide Squad, and Wu-Tang Killa Beez changed their name to Swimming Manatees. Halifax Lions were re-branded to Beer Chuggers.